Adobe Pixel Bender

On 2nd April Adobe launches on its lab the 6th prerelease of its great technology named PixelBender for image and video processing, dedicated to Flash/Flex experimentation as for After Effects and now Photoshop (via a plugin).

It’s a good occasion for me to introduce this promising Adobe technology.

The Pixel Bender Toolkit includes the Pixel Bender kernel language and graph language, the Pixel Bender Toolkit IDE (an integrated development environment for Pixel Bender), sample filters, and documentation.
The Pixel Bender kernel language is used to implement image processing algorithms (filters or effects) in a hardware-independent manner.
The Pixel Bender graph language is an XML-based language for combining individual pixel-processing operations (kernels) into more complex Pixel Bender filters.

Once Adobe Pixel Toolkit is downloaded, the install process is very easy.

The PixelBender IDE is very simple. You first load the image you want to apply the effect to. Above the image you have access to the kernel language. The right panel is the console in with you recieve error message and when you can manipulate property values.

The Pixel Bender Exchange is a good way to discover new effects and sometimes to download for free.
The most spectacular effects have ever seen now are :
¬ Ray Tracer by Mike Welsh
¬ Tom Beddard’s Mandelbrot generator

And to read post by PixelBender developer (guru):
¬ Petri Leskinen’s blog – Pixelero
¬ Kevin Goldsmith’s blog
¬ Frank Reitberger’s blog

And you may know the Pixel Bender Explorer AIR application develop by the Ext Core cross-browser JavaScript library team.

I effectively recommend this technology.

PS : Next post on Wednesday 15 April, 2oo9. I’m on holidays for 2 days now!